Last week Yuuguu (previous coverage here) lifted the wraps on its corporate edition, a tool that brings together web conferencing, a business-class instant messenger and presence via a single, customizable and secure collaboration platform.

Yuuguu is tailoring their offering to corporate users by giving them some added features, namely:

the ability to embed web conferencing into an organization’s website

simplified scheduling

custom branding of web conferencing sessions

enhanced session security

a fully integrated toll free audio conferencing service.

It’s a busy space, at one end Yuuguu has still competition from Webex and Cisco’s Presence products, at the other they go up against Skype and its ilk. I asked Anish Kapoor, CEO of Yuuguu how they intended differentiating themselves a space in this busy niche. His response was as expected:

In terms of where the new service sits, its really aimed at organisations who have outgrown the simpler web conferencing services, are fed up of the complexity with scheduling of the larger players, want to start to brand their web conferencing, especially for sales, and don’t want to scale up to a full blown Unified Communications offering.

I further quizzed Kapoor about what time of businesses Yuuguu is targeting, his response:

We see a very valuable mid-market segment to the web-conferencing sector. Our sweet spot is 100-500 desktop organisations…as these tend to want better, more integrated web conferencing rather than the full blown unified communications play of a WebEx/Microsoft/IBM. So we see a very substantial market for a web conferencing solution which fixes the problems the mid-market faces….which are:

a. Better support for sales teams – hence our focus on instant sessions, no downloads for participants and simplifying scheduling

b. Having a collaboration tool for the entire business – hence our additional focus on presence, messaging, compliance and ease of external deployment

The new offering is priced at 25 USD/GBP/EUR per month. For organisation wide pricing Yuuguu discount’s this price heavily to give a much lower price per seat, again Kapoor sees this as a differentiator saying:

…Yuuguu is cheaper than the alternatives by some margin…particularly when companies roll out Yuuguu to all their employees. MS Live Meeting is cheaper than Yuuguu, but does not solve the two issues identified above.

Time will tell whether there’s enough of a space in the marketplace for Yuuguu to prove successful.

Post Views: 4

Share:

Ben Kepes is a technology evangelist, an investor, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud. His areas of interest extend to enterprise software, software integration, financial/accounting software, platforms and infrastructure as well as articulating technology simply for everyday users.